Switzerland
Who ruled Zürich?
Zürich dates from about 15 BCE. On our historical maps, the ground it stands on has been drawn inside 15 different states, empires and peoples. Read the history of Switzerland.
The history of Zürich
Zürich lies at the northern end of Lake Zürich, where the Limmat River flows out of the lake, in the hilly lowlands of northern Switzerland. The lake and river made it a natural transfer point for goods moving between the Rhine and the Alpine passes. A small Roman customs post and later a medieval town of abbeys and guilds, it became the centre of the Swiss Reformation in the 16th century and of Swiss banking and industry in the 19th. It is today the largest city in Switzerland, though not its capital.
Lake dwellers, Romans and abbeys
People lived on the shores of the lake from the Neolithic onwards, building villages of wooden houses on piles at the water's edge; several of these sites form part of a UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. A Celtic settlement occupied the Lindenhof hill above the river before the Romans arrived. Under the Roman Empire the place was known as Turicum and had a customs station collecting duties on goods crossing between provinces; a 2nd-century tombstone preserves the name. A small fort stood on the Lindenhof in the late Roman period.
After Roman rule ended, the area was settled by the Alemanni and came under the Frankish kingdom. Local legend credits Charlemagne with founding the Grossmünster church over the graves of the city's martyr saints, Felix and Regula. In 853 his grandson Louis the German founded the Fraumünster abbey for his daughter Hildegard, and its abbesses held important rights over the town for centuries. A royal palace stood on the Lindenhof.
Free city and Swiss canton
When the Zähringen dukes, the town's overlords, died out in 1218, Zürich became an imperial free city within the Holy Roman Empire, answerable only to the emperor. In 1336 the knight Rudolf Brun led a revolt that gave the craft guilds a share of power, with himself as mayor for life. To defend his regime against the Habsburgs, Zürich joined the Swiss Confederation in 1351. In the Old Zürich War (1440 to 1446) the city fought its own confederates in alliance with the Habsburgs and lost.
From 1519 the priest Huldrych Zwingli, preaching at the Grossmünster, led a Reformation that the city council adopted in the following years, abolishing the mass, closing monasteries and stripping the churches of images. Zwingli was killed in 1531 at the Battle of Kappel, fighting the Catholic cantons, but Zürich remained Protestant. Protestant refugees from Italy and France later brought silk and other textile skills that enriched the city.
The modern city
The old patrician government collapsed when French revolutionary armies invaded in 1798 and created the Helvetic Republic, and two battles were fought near the city in 1799. Under the federal state founded in 1848, Zürich became the country's economic centre. The first railway built entirely on Swiss soil, from Zürich to Baden, opened in 1847; the federal polytechnic, now ETH Zürich, opened in 1855; and the bank that became Credit Suisse was founded in 1856. Albert Einstein studied at the polytechnic, and during the First World War Lenin lived in the city while the Dada artists launched their movement at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916.
The city absorbed its suburbs in 1893 and 1934. It is now a global financial centre with about 430,000 inhabitants and more than a million in its metropolitan area, and its residents vote directly on many local decisions in the Swiss tradition.
In pictures
1 images · scroll →Timeline
20 periods- 123,000 BCE – 10,000 BCENeanderthalMap of 123,000 BCE →
- 10,000 BCE – 1500 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 10,000 BCE →
- 1500 BCE – 1000 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 1500 BCE →
- 1000 BCE – 700 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 1000 BCE →
- 700 BCE – 500 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 700 BCE →
- 500 BCE – 400 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 500 BCE →
- 400 BCE – 323 BCEHallstatt cultureMap of 400 BCE →
- 323 BCE – 1 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 323 BCE →
- 1 BCE – 300 CERoman EmpireMap of 1 BCE →
- 300 CE – 400 CERome (Maximian)Map of 300 CE →
- 400 CE – 500 CEWestern Roman EmpireMap of 400 CE →
- 500 CE – 600 CEFranksMap of 500 CE →
- 600 CE – 800 CEFrankish KingdomMap of 600 CE →
- 800 CE – 900 CECarolingian EmpireMap of 800 CE →
- 900 CE – 1000 CEEast FranciaMap of 900 CE →
- 1000 CE – 1100 CEDuchy of Swabiaunder Holy Roman EmpireMap of 1000 CE →
- 1100 CE – 1492 CEHoly Roman EmpireMap of 1100 CE →
- 1492 CE – 1800 CESwiss ConfederationMap of 1492 CE →
- 1800 CE – 1815 CEHelvetic RepublicMap of 1800 CE →
- 1815 CE – todaySwitzerlandMap of 1815 CE →
Quick answers
- Who rules Zürich today?
- On the latest map, Zürich is in Switzerland.
- Who ruled Zürich the longest?
- On our maps, the Holy Roman Empire, for about 392 years (1100 CE to 1492 CE).
- How many times has Zürich changed hands?
- Our maps show it passing to a new ruler 9 times since 1 CE.
- Who ruled Zürich in 1 CE, 1000, 1500 and 1900?
- In 1 CE: Roman Empire. In 1000: Duchy of Swabia. In 1500: Swiss Confederation. In 1900: Switzerland.
Dates are the years of our map snapshots, which are decades or centuries apart, so a change shown between two years happened at some point in that gap. The borders come from the historical-basemaps project and are approximate, especially for the ancient world and for peoples without fixed frontiers.
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